Unique Ben Tre floating coconut market - Final episode: Becoming a billionaire from discarded coconut shells

13/02/2023 1416 0
Theo ước tính của anh Trần Văn Bình, hiện tại ở xã An Thạnh có hơn 50 cơ sở, doanh nghiệp, công ty sản xuất chỉ xơ dừa và các sản phẩm từ chỉ xơ dừa.

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Making coconut fiber products - Photo: HUNG ANH

In the middle of the afternoon, the sunny sky suddenly turned gloomy and turned to rain. Mr. Tu Binh (Tran Van Binh, Vinh Khanh hamlet, An Thanh commune, Mo Cay Nam district, Ben Tre) rushed into the large yard drying with golden coconut fiber, shouting loudly: "Hey! Watch out for the rain. If the bunch is dry, then cover it tightly to prevent it from getting wet in the rain. It takes time to dry it again. It's tiring."

"Golden fiber hamlet"

Standing and looking at the female workers who were quickly raking and gathering piles of dried coconut fiber and covering it with a plastic tarpaulin to protect them from the rain, Mr. Binh said: "This job is best during the dry season. In the morning, we put the coconut fiber out to dry, and in the afternoon, is dry and meets standards".

Mr. Binh said that the profession of making coconut fiber for export appeared in Vinh Khanh hamlet after 1990, and has now become a key profession helping many people make money locally.

According to Mr. Binh's estimates, currently in An Thanh commune there are more than 50 establishments, businesses, and companies producing coconut fiber and products from coconut fiber.

Coconut fiber uses raw materials such as waste dried coconut shells, so when coconut fiber production facilities spring up, hundreds of dry coconut purchasing warehouses open along the banks of the Thom River to provide dry coconut shells for fiber making.

Many residents of Vinh Khanh hamlet assert that the first person to bring the coconut fiber industry to the hamlet was Mr. Sau Nhu (Nguyen Van Nhu, born in 1960). Before 1990, Mr. Sau Nhu rowed a boat to buy and sell coconut shells from Ben Tre to Tra Vinh, Vinh Long, and Tien Giang.

During his years of buying and selling waste products from coconuts, he learned the profession of making coconut fiber from discarded dried coconut shells. After that, the product sold at a high price thanks to export.

After Mr. Sau Nhu opened a successful coconut fiber production facility, many people in the neighborhood came to learn and gradually formed the Vinh Khanh coconut fiber village.

It is said that when Mr. Sau Nhu first went to a company specializing in producing and purchasing coconut fiber for export in Ben Tre town, he asked for vocational training and cooperation in supplying coconut fiber, but was refused by this place.

Even though he was angry, Mr. Sau Nhu still restrained himself and asked to see the coconut fiber production process to open his eyes. Returning home, he remembered what he had seen and heard in his mind, hired gardeners to make and assemble machines to crack coconut shells and pull fibers.

At that time, Vinh Khanh hamlet did not have electricity, all of Mr. Sau Nhu's machines had to use diesel engines. As for the fiber stripping machine, Mr. Sau installed a D 15 diesel engine instead of an electric motor, which is both easy to use and easy to move everywhere, with a capacity of 500kg of thread/day while the assembly and operating costs are only 50%. machine uses electricity.

For many years, coconut shelling, threading, and thread stripping machines using diesel "invented" by Mr. Sau have been widely used by people. When grid power comes to the hamlet, diesel engines "retire" and are replaced by electric motors.

Mr. Binh said that the profession of making coconut fiber includes many stages. First, dried coconut shells are put into the machine to beat them. Then, put the crushed coconut shell into the rotating machine to beat and strip the golden threads from the coconut fiber.

Coconut fiber must be dried before being baled to supply factories that produce handicraft products from coconut fiber such as carpets, mattresses... for export. "To have 1 ton of raw coconut fiber, you need 8 thousand dried coconut shells (9,600 shells).

Depending on the scale of production, if weather conditions are favorable and raw materials are abundant, every day a coconut fiber production facility can produce from 5 to 10 tons of dry thread.

As far as I know, each year the coconut fiber craft village along the Thom River provides more than 40,000 tons of raw materials for businesses producing handicrafts for export. If we calculate the lowest price of 3,000 VND/kg of raw coconut fiber, every year waste dried coconut shells bring the "golden thread village" of Thom River more than 120 billion VND", Mr. Binh said.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Chau, a thread dryer, said that in the "golden thread village" of Thom River, strong men operate coconut shell breakers, yarn winders, thread separators, and balers of finished coconut fiber.

Particularly, coconut fiber drying workers are mostly women, because this is a light job with the main job being to rake the thread so it dries quickly.

"Drying 1 ton only receives a wage of 270,000 VND. In the dry season, every day a worker can dry 1.5 tons of coconut fiber. The rainy season is more difficult, sometimes it takes 2-3 days to dry 1 ton of fiber", Ms. Chau said.

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A coconut fiber drying yard in Vinh Khanh - Photo: Hung Anh

The story of the "black river" becoming a clean river

But the "gold thread hamlet" of Thom River also had a long time to pay for its wealth. Going back to the past, before 2010, when the "golden thread village" was doing well, residents living on the Thom river were complaining about the very serious and prolonged pollution caused by coco peat - a waste product in the coconut fiber production process.

"For many years, the water of the Thom River has become black and smelly due to the daily exposure to hundreds of tons of coco peat from coconut fiber production facilities.

The relevant authorities continuously check and punish, but the facility owner accepts to pay a fine to dump coco peat into the river because the fine is light and they have no way to deal with coco peat" - Mr. Vo Van Hung , a resident of An Thanh commune, recalls.

According to the Department of Science and Technology of Ben Tre province, about 3.3 thousand dried coconut shells (4,000 shells) after separating will produce 1 ton of waste coco peat.

Every year, Ben Tre coconut fiber establishments and businesses release more than 140,000 tons of coco peat into the environment (more than 50% from the Thom River coconut market), causing serious pollution, causing a lot of headaches for the responsible agencies.

Recently, the government and responsible agencies of Ben Tre have had many preferential policies for businesses to turn worthless waste coco peat into useful products for life.

That is the application of technical solutions to remove harmful substances in coco peat, turning coco peat into clean soil products, soil replacement media, high quality organic fertilizer... serving flower villages, plant propagation in Cho Lach (Ben Tre), Sa Dec (Dong Thap) and export.

According to Mr. Dang Van Cu (Department of Science and Technology of Ben Tre province), coco peat is a waste product worth 0 VND/kg but when it becomes a production material, it is purchased for 2,300 VND/kg.

When coco peat is processed into clean soil, dried and pressed into pellets to meet export standards, the selling price is 4,200 VND/kg.

Clean soil products, after mixing useful microorganisms, trace and macro minerals, and high-quality organic materials, become high-quality organic fertilizer. This product is supplied to high-tech agricultural zones, exports, growing safe vegetables, growing ornamental flowers... with a selling price of 50,000 - 60,000 VND/kg.

When coco peat no longer causes pollution, the Thom river becomes fresh again. Mr. Hung said that the Thom River floating market only buys and sells one item: dried coconuts. From coconut shells to coconut shells are used, so there is almost no waste from coconut processing dumped into the river like in previous years.

How much do Ben Tre people owe to coconut trees...

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"The tourist boats operating on the Thom River floating market all have trash baskets. Tourists are aware of hygiene and do not throw trash into the river. As for residents living along the river banks, many people are obsessed with the fact that the river used to have black water and a foul smell, no one threw trash into the river because there were trucks on the bank to pick up trash," Mr. Hung confided.

HUNG ANH

Source https://tuoitre.vn (Tuoi Tre Online)

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